McCain's nightmare
Mike Pilewski
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UPDATE 23 July 2008: It's a classic case of "be careful what you wish for". John McCain had taunted Barack Obama for having made up his mind about Iraq without having visited the country. The old hand offered to take the greenhorn with him and show him the ropes. He probably didn't expect Obama to go without him.
For a crash course in foreign policy, Obama has done very well. He got the ear of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, and offered his own in return.  Obama is the first major U.S. politician to acknowledge that the Iraqi government wants American troops out of the country — a position it's quietly repeated for two years while the U.S. has continued to build 14 military bases there. Al-Maliki's wish to have U.S. troops removed by the end of 2010 struck a parallel to Obama's plan to withdraw them by the middle of that year.
The trip got very little attention from the U.S. media before it began. Television commentators had been focusing less on the obvious ideological differences between Obama and McCain than on the difference in the execution of their two campaigns. Obama continues to do everything according to plan. He is raising money faster than McCain, in spite of his request that donors try to pay off Hillary Clinton's massive campaign debt as well. McCain, meanwhile, has made one mistake after another. Again he had to let go of a financial co-chairman of his campaign for having questionable business dealings with foreign interests.
One has to wonder what's happened to John McCain. His many fact-finding trips abroad form the backbone of his foreign-policy experience. Yet on his last trip to the Middle East, in March, he repeatedly confused Shia and Sunni. Twice last week, he said he was worried about relations between Russia and Czechoslovakia, a country that no longer exists. On Monday, he referred to "a difficult situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border." Did he maybe mean Iran, which lies between the two countries?
This constant string of gaffes is making it hard for McCain to present himself as the more credible candidate. Even MSNBC's conservative commentators have begun to doubt him.
Obama's trip, as it continues to Europe, still has potential to backfire.  It's an open secret that he is more popular there, among foreigners and expatriate Americans, than at home. A lot of — perhaps even most — Americans strongly resent the idea that the rest of the world should have a say in what their country does. And right now, Americans hit hard by the economic crisis will not respect a politician for seeking photo opportunities in foreign capitals when help is needed at home.
Ultimately, the U.S. media will determine whether the trip is a PR success for Obama. The major television networks have sent not just reporters, but prominent anchors, to follow the candidate. McCain has dropped out of the news temporarily, and has resorted to buying television ads that portray Obama as naive, wrong and inconsistent on Iraq.
McCain is doing exactly what Obama and Hillary Clinton did this spring, and with the same result. By making all of his statements about his opponent, instead of himself, he is simply ensuring that his opponent will get all of the attention.
NEXT PAGE: Reading the polls 
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